In computers and other electrical systems, it is often necessary to electrically connect the terminals of two printed circuits or to connect the terminals of a flexible circuit such as a jumper cable to terminals of a PC board. One way of accomplishing this is to expose segments of the circuit conductors and to clamp the flexible circuit to the PC board so that those segments are in register with the conductors or terminals of the PC board. An arrangement such as this is disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 416,490, filed Sept. 10, 1982, entitled FLEXIBLE CIRCUIT CONNECTION ASSEMBLY owned by the Assignee of the present application.
In the connector arrangement disclosed in the aforesaid application, a flexible jumper cable is mounted to the underside of a clamping connector with the conductors of the cable being exposed at the underside of the connector. The connector has two locating posts which project down below the cable and are arranged to engage in holes in the PC board to which the cable is being connected. The PC board has conductors or terminals located between those holes which correspond to the cable conductors so that when the connector posts are received in the PC board holes, the two sets of conductors are in register. Accordingly when the connector clamps to the PC board, a good electrical connection is made between each of the conductors or contacts of the flexible circuit and the corresponding conductors or terminals of the PC board.
The aforesaid arrangement works quite well when the conductors of the printed circuit and PC board are relatively wide (e.g., 0.01 inch) and widely spaced (e.g., 0.015 inch apart). But the cable and PC board are not positioned accurately enough by the aforesaid post-and-hole engagement of the connector and board to achieve proper registration of the cable and PC board conductors when those circuits are so called fine line circuits whose conductors are very narrow and closely spaced. A typical fine line circuit has conductors which are only 0.005 inch wide and 0.005 inch apart. As a result, it has not been feasible heretofor to use such clamping-type electrical connectors to couple fine line circuits.